How do you prevent a new window from opening when running :make

Question

Whenever I run :make in Vim, it always takes control away from my buffer, places me in a temporary view where I see the makeprg's output and then prompts me to "Press ENTER or type command to continue". Is there a way so I can run :make without leaving my current buffer?

For context, I'm using pyunit to parse Python tracebacks, using make. WHen make is finished, it populates the traceback in my quickfix buffer. So I don't need to see the intermediary make output. Just the quickfix is all I want.

For context, I'm running something like this:

compiler pyunit
set makeprg=cat\ %
make

Answer 1

One way to do this natively in vim is to utilise system() or systemlist(). I'm not familiar with pyunit, but something like the following may help you get started.

function! MyMake() abort
    let l:efm = "%C %.%#,%A  File "%f"\, line %l%.%#,%Z%[%^ ]%\@=%m"
    let l:lines = systemlist("cat " . expand("%"))
    call setqflist([], " ", {"efm": l:efm, "lines": l:lines})
endfunction

Answer 2

You can use tpope’s dispatch plugin and run :Make for an asynchronous make.